Column by Dr. Nancy Alvarez: Making commitments is much more than buying rings or walking down the aisle

What is commitment? Don’t think that making commitments means buying rings or going to the altar dressed in white. That is only one part, and not the most decisive. Nor is it a commitment to decide to live under the same roof with someone.

I always felt like no one explained well what commitment meant. One day I asked Dr. Vicente Vargas, and a simple example was worth a thousand words. He asked me the following question: “Nancy, who is more involved in a scrambled egg and ham, the chicken or the pig?”

No one answered. Dr. Vargas continued. The chicken laid an egg and left, not even warming it again. They killed the pig, tore off its leg, filled it with salt, hung it until it turned into ham, and then cut it into slices to make the egg and ham. Who was more committed? We all shouted: “the pig.” “Exactly,” Vicente said.

If a human being truly loves a person, they are determined to do whatever is necessary for them. Nobody and nothing is more important than that person. Only in the case of sexual, physical, emotional abuse or neglect can we stop in our tracks, review our commitment and run to defend our children. Only someone can be above that commitment, the one you have with yourself.

Each couple must form a new family, which is based on what their families of origin were and what they both want to keep and/or change. If the person is more committed to mom or dad than to their partner, the new family will be quite dysfunctional.

If you doubt this, look at a toxic grandmother who constantly supports the grandchild, disavows the mother or manipulates with the money she gives to the new parents, to ensure that what she says is done with the child and in the house. Or the mother-in-law who calls every day to see what they fed “her baby” from her, in addition to living criticizing how they wash his shirts and how that “shameless” daughter-in-law of hers treats him.

That is why the commitment of the couple is important, and that no one is closer to the husband than the wife, and vice versa. Their first loyalty should be to their partner, even above their parents and siblings.

Trust and reciprocity (fair giving and receiving) can only exist in a relationship where there is commitment. No one gives themselves completely if they feel that the other party is not committed.

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